Thursday, July 23, 2009

“easyJet”ing from Berlin to Rome

The trip from Berlin to Rome by train can easily take over 16 hours, and flying within Europe is fairly inexpensive, so Nick and I decided to fly. This is our first trip ever with the easyJet airlines, and boarding was an experience in itself.

After checking in, we quickly realized that do not have assigned seats. It turns out no one does. Passengers are divided into 2 boarding groups, with group A having priority seating over group B. We were in group B of course.

Everyone was peacefully sitting in the gate area when we got there. Two men in uniforms worked their way towards the doors to the gate. Clearly this was the special signal. Everyone jumped up, and ran towards the doors. Needless to say, they did not let anyone through right then and there. When our boarding group did walk out onto the runway, people were running trying to beat each other to the airplane doors.

I expected the madness to continue inside the plane, but we were pleasantly surprised. Perhaps it helps that the airplane was not full, but we had no problem finding 2 seats together.

2 comments:

Ryan said...

Sounds like Southwest! I like this much better than assigned seats.

An American in London said...

People aren't normally *that* crazy about boarding EasyJet. And in any case, you should know that EasyJet is *so* much better than RyanAir bc it flies into major airports, rather than out-of-the-way satellite ones.

Sounds like you're having a great time!